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SimCity Goes Way Wonkier

A new video game has been released that has players trying to solve urban issues and make cities work better. Next American City columnist Christian Madera reviews.

The new game is CityOne, and it has been released by IBM as part of a broad program aimed at making improvements to the urban realm.

"While comparisons have been made to SimCity, unlike the popular Maxis title, the object isn't to build a city. Rather, players are faced with a series of problem scenarios related to four sectors – energy, water, banking and retail – and ask to choose a solution that can help make things work better (or should I say, smarter). Once players complete 10 rounds, the game provides an assessment of your performance, and classifies you as one of five types of leaders – pragmatic, conservative, short-term oriented, futurist or evasive (if you happen to "ignore the problem" too many times). There's also high score board and map showing players from all over the world."